How to use eye drops

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I'm Dr. Alan Greene and let's talk about how to put eye drops in. The problem people often have is when you tilt your head back and you see that dropper looming up there and the drops start falling down, it's a natural response to blink. You can send that drop spraying where you don't want it to go. And it can be a little uncomfortable to have that drop come down and strike your eye. If you can keep your eyes open, that's great and it works very well. But if you can't like many people, if not most people, not to worry. There's another way that works very, very well. And what you do is you'll simply tilt your head back hold the dropper right above your eyes with your eyes closed. You don't want the dropper to actually touch the eye because you can contaminate the dropper or your eye, one or the other if there's an infection involved somewhere. Just do like this - couple drops right in the corner and then blink while you're head is still up. And when you do that it will slip right in very comfortably and you'll get the whole dosage in and it works very well.

Revision

Last reviewed 9/18/2011 by David C. Dugdale, III, MD, Professor of Medicine, Division of General Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical Director, A.D.A.M., Inc.

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